This study investigates ecological (individual, family, school and community) predictors of positive mental health, using two distinct methods of operationalizing resilience ((1) as a continuous variable and (2) as a categorical construct) across two critical stages of development (middle childhood - age 11 and adolescent - age 16). It compares short- and long-term resilience processes and delineates differential impacts of distal, proximal and multiple concurrent risk factors (""""""""pileup""""""""). Childhood factors associated with the development of adolescent resiliency will thus be delineated for a sample of 850 inner-city, minority youth. The investigation utilizes existing data from the Chicago Longitudinal Study of Children at Risk (acronym CLS: NICHHD grant R29HD34294), a prospective program of longitudinal research focused on the long-term academic and social effects of an early childhood Child Parent Center intervention program. Aside from delineating resilience correlates, primary study objectives include: A) exploring how childhood risk and resilience is associated with adolescent risk and resilience, B) assessing various types of levels of risk to determine their relative deleterious impacts on mental health and C) evaluating to what extent resilience in one domain is related to resilience in other areas. Sample hypotheses include; 1) proximal risk variables and accumulated risk will have strong, negative main effects in predicting mental health outcomes, 2) protective interaction effects will be found among individual, family, school, and neighborhood variables and 3) resilience will be domain-specific with some domains showing more temporal stability than others. Analyses will use ols linear and multi-nominal logit regression techniques.
